


Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy

by sunshineinthestorm



Series: bury your demons (or let them play) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, F/M, Humor, also this fic is canon compliant, and, because i mean... stiles is a ghost, but don't worry this fic isn't all angst, don't expect a perfectly happy ending though, he's dead before the fic even starts, is the best way to tag this honestly, the major character death is stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:57:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineinthestorm/pseuds/sunshineinthestorm
Summary: "Are you a malevolent spirit?"The ghost scoffed. It was a fairly impressive scoff, considering that he had no corporeal form and his voice sounded muffled, like he was speaking through a door. Which made sense, Lydia deduced, since he was technically speaking through dimensions. "Do I sound like a malevolent spirit?"The truth was that he didn't, but Lydia wasn't willing to take any chances. "I'm sorry, perhaps I wasn't specific enough. Are you going to make it difficult for me to sell this house?""What, me?" the ghost gasped. "I wouldn't dream of it."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything for the Stydia fandom. Hello, everyone!
> 
> First of all, this fic is inspired by [this tumblr post](http://actuallymollyweasley.tumblr.com/post/153670465495/appleschloss-thecw4kids-ghost-in-the-house), so if you're wondering why its premise sounds familiar, that's probably why! I basically saw that post and was like "but what if it was about STYDIA. and ANGSTY." and here we are lol.
> 
> Also, Stiles is dead in this fic, so yes, the major character death warning applies. Also, there is one part of this fic that does contain some fairly graphic descriptions of violence and injury... nothing more gory than canon, but if you're worried, you can skip the italicized section of this fic and avoid all that.
> 
> Now onto the fun part! First, I would like to thank my beta, [Bri/@persephony](http://persephony.tumblr.com), for working with my crazy schedule and putting up with my inability to finish things in a timely fashion! Any leftover mistakes are my fault, not hers. Also, a million thanks to the artists who made pieces for this fic - [Jade/@wellsjahasghost](http://wellsjahasghost.tumblr.com) and [Sam/@hoalysmoaks](http://hoalysmoaks.tumblr.com), your artwork is gorgeous and I'm obsessed with both pieces! And thanks to all three of you for being the best cheerleaders throughout this entire process! You're the best big bang team I could have asked for. :)
> 
> Speaking of the big bang, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who organized this event over at [@stydiamonth](http://stydiamonth.tumblr.com)! I'm not going to include everyone's url because I know I'd forget someone, but they put tons of work into this and deserve all the gratitude and adoration. (As do all the other writers/artists/betas who made content for this big bang, so even if you hate this fic [which I hope you won't, but you never know], you should go over to the stydiamonth tumblr, read the other fics people have written, and leave a million comments! And reblog the artists' posts as well! Everyone worked really hard and should be properly appreciated.)
> 
> And finally, thanks to [@songsof-light](http://songsof-light.tumblr.com) for making the gorgeous title card for this fic!
> 
> Now that you've gotten through the author's note that's practically as long as the fic itself, here's Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
> 
> ([And a playlist that I made that you can listen to as you read if you want.](https://open.spotify.com/user/sunshineinthestorm/playlist/5QqhCdeiBQMYACoc8f9iLC) :))

It was a nice house, Lydia observed as she traipsed up the steps in her stilettos and slotted her realtor's key into the doorknob. Although it wouldn't have been her first color choice, a fresh coat of red paint was doing wonders for the siding, which was beautifully complemented by the bright white trim around the windows and underneath the roof. The rosebushes in front of the small porch were a well-trimmed, well-thought-out touch, as was the maple tree to the left of the driveway. There was even a pretty window set into the wooden door that lent the house an elegant air without looking like the owner was overcompensating for its modest size. All in all, the house exuded warmth and familiarity. Selling it would be a simple matter of finding the buyer with the deepest pockets.

Lydia pushed open the door.

The house even  _ smelled _ good — like rosewood and honeysuckle. Yes, Lydia thought, this would be an easy one to se—

" _ Holy fucking shit. _ "

Lydia whirled around, raising her hands instinctively. "Who was that?"

Nothing.

Then, accompanied by a rush of air that sounded suspiciously like a shuddering exhale, she heard, "Fuck, it's really—"

"Really  _ what _ ?" Lydia demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"It's—really nice to see another person around here. I was getting bored."

The door slammed shut behind her.

Slowly, Lydia lowered her hands. "You're a ghost, aren't you?"

"Huh. You figured that out quickly."

"I'm a banshee," she said, deadpan. "You're not the weirdest supernatural creature I've encountered."

"Oh, so I'm a  _ creature _ now?" The voice sounded strangely offended. "I'll have you know that I'm 100% human. Or I was, anyway."

"Yes, you  _ were _ ," she said. "Emphasis on the past tense."

"Okay, fine. I  _ was _ . 'Creature' is still an insensitive way to put it."

"Well, forgive me if I don't particularly care about your  _ sensitivity _ ," she said, shifting her weight to her right hip and crossing her arms. "Are you a malevolent spirit?"

The ghost scoffed. It was a fairly impressive scoff, considering that he had no corporeal form and his voice sounded muffled, like he was speaking through a door. Which made sense, Lydia deduced, since he was technically speaking through dimensions. "Do I  _ sound _ like a malevolent spirit?"

The truth was that he didn't, but Lydia wasn't willing to take any chances. "I'm sorry, perhaps I wasn't specific enough. Are you going to make it difficult for me to sell this house?"

"What,  _ me _ ?" the ghost gasped. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Lydia pursed her lips. "I'll believe that when I see it."

The ghost's laugh was a strange combination of breath and substance that made her feel like she was listening to the recording of an echo of an echo of a laugh—while underwater.

The noise did nothing to restore Lydia's confidence.

* * *

"I like this house," Brooke Tennyson announced, skipping up the wooden steps and hopping onto the porch railing as if she already lived there. "I like the roses, and the grass, and the door, and the siding. Did you know that red's my favorite color?"

Lydia hated the color red, but she didn't tell Brooke that. "It's a nice color," she agreed instead, pasting on her best realtor smile. "Would you like to see the rest of the house? The dining room is red too."

"We'd love to see the rest of the house," Brooke's mom—Tiffany Tennyson—said before Brooke could respond. "Anything to get Brooke off that railing. Honey, you're going to break your neck."

"Am not," Brooke protested. "The bars at gymnastics are way scarier than this railing."

"Yes, but the bars at gymnastics won't scrape up your palms and give you splinters," Tiffany said.

"I assure you that all the wooden railings have just been re-sanded and repainted," Lydia interjected smoothly. "Brooke is completely safe from splinters. Still, you really should come in. It's a lovely house."

"I bet you're right," Brooke grinned, sliding off the railing and bouncing in place as Lydia slotted her realtor's key into the lock. "I bet you're right, because it's red, and red is the color of love, so of course it's  _ love _ -ly."

Lydia was a professional, so she refused to let her smile slip. "That's true," she replied before pushing the door open. "What would you like to see first? The kitchen? The living room? The dining room? That's the red room, remember?"

"The kitchen," Tiffany said, just as Brooke exclaimed, "The backyard!"

Tiffany lifted one perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Why do you want to go to the backyard?"

"We have to see if it's big enough for a dog!" Brooke explained. "Dad said we could get a dog after we moved! I have to see if this backyard is big enough!"

Tiffany let out a long-suffering sigh. "You can look at the backyard after we see the rest of the house, sweetheart. Besides, your dad and I agreed that we would only get a small dog, remember? Judging by the size of this house, I'm sure the backyard will be big enough for a small dog."

"It really is too bad your husband couldn't come along to visit," Lydia said, trying for kind and sympathetic rather than vaguely judgmental. "I know it can be hard to make big decisions like this when not everyone has seen the house in person."

"Oh, it's not a problem." Tiffany waved her hand dismissively. "He's the one making us move for his job, so I told him he wasn't allowed to complain about the house we chose."

"Reasonable," Lydia said, keeping her tone neutral. "In that case, let's move on to the kitchen, shall we?"

They walked through the front hall, Brooke peering at every picture frame like it contained the most exciting photograph she'd ever seen and Tiffany eyeing the décor with her nose slightly crinkled. "It's a good thing I'm not buying their furniture," she said, "but I do like this open floor plan. It would make throwing parties logistically easier, and I—"

The couch shifted three inches to the left, scraping noisily along the expensive hardwood floors as it moved.

Lydia barely withheld a curse.

Tiffany paused mid-sentence.

Brooke jumped three feet in the air. "What was  _ that _ ?" she shrieked.

"Probably just the house settling," Lydia replied, her voice higher-pitched than usual and her heart pounding furiously. That  _ fucking _ ghost. She should have known he was lying. "It rained recently, you know," she added to Tiffany, trying to pretend that this visit was salvageable. "When it rains, the soil expands, and as it dries, it contracts again, causing the house to settle. It's perfectly normal."

"Whatever you say," Tiffany said, clearly skeptical but willing to be appeased for now. "What kind of appliances are in the kitchen?"

"Oh, their kitchen is extremely up-to-date," Lydia said, hastily heading in that direction and listening for the  _ click _ of Tiffany's feather-trimmed, high-heeled ankle boots as she followed. "Their electric double wall oven is self-cleaning and has several one-touch cooking options that will ensure that everything you cook comes out perfectly done, from Thanksgiving turkeys to homemade bread. The stainless steel gas stove has a hood to ensure proper ventilation, and they have granite countertops that are heat-resistant, so you can set pans on your counter directly out of the oven without worrying about ruining the surface."

Tiffany hummed a noise of acknowledgement, running a manicured finger over the touch display of the refrigerator and inspecting its settings. Brooke skipped over to the cabinetry to see if she could reach the counters. While she was stretched up as high as she could reach, hands half an inch away from touching granite, the cabinet next to her slowly creaked open. Brooke giggled and rocked back onto her heels so she could push the door closed. As soon as she let go, it opened again.

Lydia quietly resigned herself to losing a potential buyer.

"Look, Mommy, this is a magic cabinet!" Brooke said gleefully, pushing it shut just to watch it open again.

Tiffany looked over, a crease forming between her eyebrows. "The hinges are clearly loose, Brooke," she said. "Now I know at least two things I'd have to replace."

Lydia narrowed her eyes. "Two things?"

"That sink keeps dripping," Tiffany said. "Honestly, I'm surprised your clients didn’t keep the maintenance on this property up-to-date if they really wanted someone to spend money on it."

_ This fucking ghost _ . "Those are simple enough repairs," Lydia said, jutting her hips out slightly to one side. "They'd cost less than a hundred dollars to fix."

"The money isn't the problem," Tiffany said, "it's the principle. If they skimped on these simple repairs, how do I know there aren't more serious underlying issues with this house as well? I don't like surprises, Lydia. I don't want to move in and find that there are cracks in the foundation."

As if on cue—and the ghost really  _ was _ taking cues, Lydia realized with a barely-suppressed groan—the picture frames that had fascinated Brooke began swinging back and forth. Eventually, one fell off and hit the floor in a shattering of glass and splintering wood. Behind it, a crack in the drywall was clearly visible, stemming from the nail that had held up the frame and measuring at least four inches long.

Brooke jumped at the noise and ran towards her mother, wrapping her arms around Tiffany's leg. To her credit, she didn't immediately push her daughter off.

"I changed my mind," Brooke announced, making a face at the glass on the floor. "I don't like this house anymore."

"Neither do I," Tiffany said, pushing her shoulders back and turning to leave with one last supercilious glance in Lydia's direction. "That's one repair too many, Lydia. A shaking house implies problems more serious than 'settling.' I'd advise you to get a professional to examine this property before showing it to any other families."

"Of course," Lydia said, keeping her voice icily civil to conceal her disgust at Tiffany telling her how to do her job. The "professional" who had inspected the house obviously hadn't found any structural damage or problems of any kind—but then, the ghost hadn't decided to make an appearance while the inspector was in the house. "I hope you find another property that's suitable for your needs."

Tiffany nodded once, curtly, and then took Brooke's hand and practically dragged her out of the house.

As soon as the front door closed behind her, Lydia whirled around and hissed, "What do you think you're doing?! You said you wouldn't make it difficult for me to sell this house!"

"The girl said she wanted a dog," the ghost said, sounding completely unrepentant. "Dogs can see me. It would bark constantly and growl at me and follow me all over the place and be generally fucking annoying. I can't let anyone with pets live in this house."

Lydia crossed her arms. "Yesterday, I went upstairs and found my client's extra laptop open to an article titled 'Top Ten Cutest Instagram Dogs.'"

"What? I like to stay up-to-date on my pop culture knowledge."

"Of dogs?"

The ghost huffed out a breath, even though he had no breath to huff. "Fine. I like dogs. I wouldn't have minded the dog, even if it barked at me and followed me around. But Tiffany was hella annoying. I couldn't suffer through seeing her overrule Brooke's wishes and stomp around in those ugly-ass boots for the rest of my life."

"You're dead," Lydia reminded him flatly.

"Exactly! I wouldn't even be able to die to get away from her."

Lydia resisted the urge to strangle thin air. "I have another potential buyer arriving at three-thirty," she said instead. Her tone could be interpreted as either prim or frigid. She left it up to the ghost to decide. "If you haven't cleaned up the broken picture frame and moved the couch back by then, I'll have a priest perform an exorcism."

The ghost snorted. "Come on, Lydia. You're a banshee. You have to know that an exorcism wouldn't get rid of me."

"Maybe not," she said, and now her voice was definitely frigid. "But I'll also take all the electronics out of this house for the next two weeks. You won't be able to keep up with the world's cutest dogs, let alone reality television."

For a moment, everything in the house was still, as if her words had been an exorcism on their own. Then, very slowly, the largest piece of glass lifted off the floor and floated into the trash can.

Lydia flipped her hair over her shoulder and left with a soft  _ hmph _ of victory.

* * *

She came back at three o'clock, just in case that asshole of a ghost hadn't finished his job or had decided to make an even bigger mess in retaliation. Instead of broken glass or tattered curtains, she discovered a plate of dark chocolate chip cookies sitting on the counter, heat radiating off of them like they had just come out of the oven. For half a moment, she wondered if they might be poisoned, but then she remembered that if she died here, the ghost would probably have to deal with her presence for the rest of eternity, and he probably wanted that about as much as she did.

Lydia ate two and hid the rest in a cabinet for later. (Just because she had to be nice to potential buyers didn't mean that she wanted to share her cookies with them.) They were gooey and warm and made the house smell sweet and comforting just in time for her next showing, so Lydia decided that they were an acceptable peace offering.

Of course, as soon as a finicky forty-year-old bachelor arrived in time for her next appointment, the ghost fidgeted with the thermostat until he muttered something about faulty heating systems and left.

But he seemed a little too stingy to give her clients a good offer anyway.

And those chocolate chip cookies really did taste homemade.

* * *

Ten days and six failed showings later, Lydia was out of cookies and patience.

"Last time, he wasn't even  _ trying _ to be subtle about it!" Lydia snapped, jabbing her fork into her spinach salad for emphasis. "He made moaning ghost noises and got the floorboards to creak for no reason! Then he opened the door to the coat closet at the slowest possible speed, just to be as  _ obnoxious _ as possible, and knocked exactly six rolls of toilet paper off the top shelf! Not only am I pretty sure that he traumatized that eight-year-old boy for life, but there's no  _ way _ I'm going to sell this house if it gets a reputation for being  _ haunted _ ."

"To be fair," Scott said, munching on several fries at once and looking annoyingly unconcerned, "it is."

Lydia huffed and crossed her arms. "You are completely unhelpful, you know that?" she said. "I don't know why I even bothered to show up to lunch today."

Scott grinned. "Because you feel better after you complain about things."

"No, I feel better after someone tells me that my complaints are valid."

"Lydia," Scott said, "your complaints are valid."

He kept a straight face for about two seconds, and then he added, "Toilet paper, though? You have to admit, that's kind of hilarious."

"Scott!"

"I think it's a good thing."

Lydia waited for Scott to tack on another punch line. When he didn't—just shoved another group of fries into his mouth and took a sip of his chocolate milkshake—she narrowed her eyes and said, "What do you mean, 'it's a good thing'?"

Scott fiddled with the edge of his napkin for a moment, then fully made eye contact with Lydia. She was startled by the sincerity in his expression. He was using his soft alpha I-just-want-what's-best-for-you puppy dog eyes, which was unfair, honestly. "It's nice to see you taking such an active interest in your job," he said finally, tucking his napkin underneath his plate. "I can't say I wasn't disappointed when you told me you were moving back here and becoming a realtor. It just… there's nothing wrong with being a realtor, obviously. But I always thought you had bigger plans."

Lydia flinched. Her thoughts drifted traitorously, recalling late nights and crescent moons and broken hearts, before she could focus on details in her surroundings. The light above their table was too bright. She could taste almonds and raspberry vinaigrette on her tongue. There was a chip on the edge of her wineglass. Her fork handle bit into her palms. They were all affirmations of the concrete, of the present, of reality, and she grabbed onto them with a desperate intake of breath. "Plans change," she said finally. "People change. I didn't like leaving you here to deal with the supernatural alone. And I didn't like…"

"I know," Scott said softly. "I'm not saying you made the wrong choice. I'm just saying I was worried about you. And even if this isn't where you thought you'd be ten years ago, I'm glad you're not completely miserable."

Lydia breathed in, breathed out, tapped her fork against the edge of her plate. "Haven't you been listening to me?" Her lipstick had stained her wineglass red. Lydia hated it. Lydia ignored it. "This ghost is becoming a serious inconvenience. I  _ am _ completely miserable."

"Yeah, I know," Scott said. He was smiling. "Ask him to bake you more cookies."

He had switched over to his soft alpha I'm-going-to-tease-you-until-you-smile puppy dog eyes.

Sometimes Lydia really hated having a best friend who could read chemo signals.

* * *

It wouldn't be as bad, Lydia decided, if the ghost would just commit to the whole destructive poltergeist thing. If that were the case, she could ask him why he hadn't passed on yet. She could help him figure out what was wrong and fix it, so he could  _ get out of her life _ and she could  _ sell this house. _ But as it stood, the ghost just… didn't seem that unhappy. So there was nothing for her to fix.

It was extremely aggravating.

"I figured you were getting tired of cookies," the ghost said, "so I made you dinner."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "For the last time," she said, "I am perfectly capable of cooking for myself. Your bribery meals aren't going to work on me."

"I seriously doubt that," the ghost said. "You've mentioned going out to eat with this Scott person at least three times this week. No one goes out that often unless they can't tell the difference between a saucepan and a skillet."

"I know what a saucepan looks like," Lydia insisted, although knowing what a saucepan looked like and knowing how to use it were two very different things. "How are you even getting the ingredients for all this food, anyway?"

"Um…" The temperature in the living room dropped by a few degrees, which is how Lydia knew the ghost was nervous. "Did you know Amazon Prime delivers food now?"

"It's delivered food for years."

"Yeah, well, I've been dead."

"Didn't stop you from learning how to use it. Speaking of which, you're avoiding my question."

"No, I'm not!" the ghost protested. "You asked me how I got the food! It's from Amazon!"

Lydia crossed her arms. "And how are you  _ paying _ for this food from Amazon?"

"Well…"

"Answer the question."

"I may or may not have looked at your credit card number while you were distracted by Feather Ankle Boots Mom."

Lydia narrowed her eyes, although the action was less satisfying when she had nothing to narrow her eyes  _ at _ . "What."

"It's not like it's an extra expense! You'd have to buy food anyway!"

"If you weren't already dead, I'd kill you—"

"Joke's on you then."

"—so instead, I'm cutting your internet for a week."

"Hey!"

"You brought this on yourself," Lydia reminded him. "If you want your internet back, you have to actually give me a chance of selling this house."

"Aw, come on," the ghost said, and she could practically  _ hear _ his shit-eating grin. The asshole. "You're Lydia Martin. You love a good challenge."

Lydia tipped her head to the side. "And why, exactly, would you think that?"

"Aw, come on," the ghost repeated, sounding even more ridiculous this time. "You've been around for over three weeks. I've seen you talk to a dozen clients. You honestly think I don't know you by now?"

Lydia huffed out a breath to avoid admitting that he was right.

"Yeah," the ghost said smugly, "I know you. Point to the poltergeist."

"You're not a poltergeist," Lydia said. "You don't have that excuse. The obnoxious destructive tendencies aren't manifestations of a preternatural disturbance. You're just preternaturally annoying.”

"I'll take that as a compliment," the ghost said. "Now, seeing as I bought this food with your money, are you going to eat it?"

Lydia really hated him.

Or, at least, she hated him until she rounded the corner and found the most beautifully plated meal she had ever seen. A piece of perfectly-cooked salmon rested on a bed of brown rice and quinoa, surrounded by grilled French green beans and paired with a glass of red wine. (A Pinot Noir that Lydia was particularly fond of, actually, judging by the label on the bottle he'd left on the counter.) A slice of lemon garnished the plate, changing the meal from nice to absurd.

Lydia wanted to roll her eyes. She wanted to lie and say that she was allergic to seafood. But the ghost had obviously spent a lot of time cooking for her.

And she  _ really _ liked Pinot Noir.

"All right," she said begrudgingly.

"All right, what?" the ghost said, faux innocence laced into every syllable.

"I'll eat it."

The ghost laughed, and the noise was just as airy and unnerving as the first time Lydia had heard it. "Good. We can watch  _ The Notebook _ while you do."

Lydia nearly dropped her glass. "Why would  _ you _ want to watch  _ The Notebook _ ?"

"I figured you'd like it," the ghost said. "It's got romance and shit."

"So what, I'd like it because I'm female?" Lydia said, setting her glass back on the counter and using anger to hide the fact that her voice was shaking. "Sexist much?"

"No, I just—you really don't want to watch it?"

"No," Lydia said shortly.  _ Concrete details,  _ she reminded herself. The salmon smelled like lemon, even from here. The hardwood floors were shinier than she remembered them from this morning. Too-bright lights dotted the ceiling above her head, just like in that stupid restaurant. She should consider changing the bulbs to try to make the kitchen feel like part of a home instead of a hospital. She should—

"Why?"

Lydia's breath came out in a shudder. She gripped the countertop.  _ Concrete details _ . "It reminds me of someone."

"Oh."

"You're not the only person I've known who's dead."

"Oh."

A pause.

"Me too."

She regained breathing control with an exasperated huff. "I don't know why you say that like it's news. Don't the undead have some kind of annual get-together? Share pop culture knowledge, complain about being unable to eat food, talk about the realtors you've annoyed?"

"Nah," the ghost said. "I can't remember the last time I talked to someone who wasn't you."

This time, Lydia was the one feeling guilty and saying, "Oh." Then, "Don't tell me that was your only option."

"Option?"

"For a movie?  _ The Notebook _ ?"

"Right. Duh." She heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like an ectoplasmic facepalm. "Of course I have other movie options. How about  _ The Princess Bride _ ?"

"Fine," Lydia said, even though agreeing with him hurt a little bit.

"Great!" the ghost said, too cheery not to be faking it. "Let's go to the couch. I'll bring the silverware and wine bottle so you don't have to carry all of it."

"The  _ couch _ ?"

"Well, the TV is in the living room. Do you have a better idea?"

"You're absurd. I can't believe I'm eating dinner and watching movies at a  _ client's house _ . This is completely unprofessional," she added as an afterthought—while kicking off her heels and curling her feet up underneath her on the couch, watching the wine bottle settle expectantly on the coffee table.

"Nah, I doubt your clients would mind," the ghost said, and Lydia felt a brush of air to her right, like the ghost was settling onto the couch beside her. She… didn't mind that as much as she probably should have. "They were barely ever around, even before they decided to move. You're probably going to spend more time on this couch, watching this movie, than they did in an entire month."

"Oh no, was the poltergeist getting lonely, here all by himself?"

"Yes," the ghost muttered, and it didn't sound as lighthearted as Lydia had expected it to. "Also, I thought you said I wasn't a poltergeist."

"Just seeing if you were paying attention," Lydia said primly, eating a bite of fish to avoid adding anything else to her statement.

And if she couldn't quite hide her moan of pleasure when she realized how good it tasted… well. Only the ghost was around to hear, anyway.

* * *

"Hey, Lydia, your phone's ringing."

Lydia blinked her eyes open slowly, trying to figure out why she could hear someone's voice when she hadn't slept with anyone in almost a year. And why that voice seemed so familiar.

"Aaaaaaand it stopped. Good job, you might have just missed a call saying that you won the lottery or someth—oh, never mind, there it goes again."

This time, the ringing cut through Lydia's haze of residual exhaustion, giving her time to wonder why she hadn't put her phone on silent before going to sleep.

A second later, she shot up on—yes, she was on the couch, she was on _her client's_ _couch_ , she had _slept at her client's house last night and—_

_ And her phone was ringing _ .

"What the hell," she said, trying very hard to keep her voice steady as she shoved her feet into her heels and reached for her purse. "You let me sleep here all night?"

"I forgot."

"What do you mean, you 'forgot?'" Lydia demanded. She stood up from the couch, glancing down to make sure her skirt wasn't twisted.

"About time passing," the ghost explained. "I forgot. It didn't seem like it had been that long."

Lydia withheld a noise of frustration but couldn't quite keep herself from gritting her teeth. "Well," she said tersely, "hopefully you can keep track of time well enough to clean up everything from last night before I get back at four with another client."

"You don't want to help me?"

She could practically hear him pouting across dimensions. Narrowing her eyes, she whirled around just in front of the door and said, "Do you think I'm rushing out of here because I  _ like _ jolting out of sleep and driving forty-five minutes before having a chance to brush my teeth? I'm going to be late for something important because  _ you _ insisted on making me dinner, so yes, you're going to clean up, and no, I'm not going to help you."

"Oh," the ghost said softly. Then, "What, got a hot lunch date?"

Lydia's chest felt tight. She had to remind herself that he didn't know, he didn't know,  _ he didn't know _ —

"Something like that."

* * *

After sliding into the driver's seat of her car, Lydia finally checked her phone and realized that the situation wasn't quite as dire as she'd feared. The calls had been from Scott, and he'd left a voicemail asking if she wanted him to bring her coffee when they met up. She wasn't late. She still had two hours to get home, take a shower, and apply mascara and contour until she looked presentable again. It was fine. She was fine.

This day was going to be fine.

Lydia convinced herself of that, right up until she parked in Sheriff Stilinski's driveway and found him sitting in his kitchen in a light grey t-shirt, eating a salad.

"Wow," she said, trying for a light tone and mostly succeeding. "I never thought I'd see you voluntarily eat fresh produce."

"Well," the sheriff said, smiling a little, "it's been ten years. I figured that fresh produce was the best way to honor Stiles's memory."

And—no. This day was not going to be fine.

She dropped into the seat next to the sheriff, hooking the low heels of her ankle boots into the bar connecting the chair legs. "That's a reasonable conjecture," she said. "He always did hate it when you ate cheeseburgers."

"Didn't stop  _ him _ from eating them though," the sheriff said. "Little shit."

"Yeah." She swallowed. "Did you cut enough lettuce for two?"

"Hopefully enough for three," Scott said, suddenly appearing in the sheriff's doorway. Sometimes Lydia really hated that being a banshee didn't give her supernaturally enhanced hearing.

"Of course I did," the sheriff said, still sporting that soft smile that Lydia couldn't find the energy to emulate as he got up to grab some additional bowls. "Wouldn't let you kids starve."

"Thanks," Scott said. Unlike Lydia, he seemed to mimic the sheriff's smile with ease before sitting beside Lydia and nudging her calf with his foot. "How are you doing?"

_ Terrible. Awful. Everything is gray and I see red whenever I close my eyes _ . "Well, I don't think either of you have to worry about me starving any time soon," she said, addressing Scott and the sheriff at the same time. "The ghost cooked me dinner last night."

Scott's eyebrows shot up. "He did?"

"Using  _ my _ credit card to buy the ingredients, yes." Lydia tugged at the cuffs of her sleeves. "He's probably never going to let me show the house to someone without scaring them off. I think he's enjoying interacting with another person too much."

"At least your job is getting interesting," Scott said. "For the last two weeks, I've just been doing wellness checkups and treating that one cat who keeps getting fleas despite living indoors."

"You're forgetting how nice that is," the sheriff interjected, setting down matching salads in front of them. "The station's been quiet for the last few weeks, and I'm appreciating every moment of peace while it lasts. You should enjoy the blessing of normality."

"Oh, I am," Scott reassured him. “I just don't understand how the fleas keep happening. You'd think the owners would have at least  _ attempted _ to deep-clean their house after the third incident, but  _ no _ . They just keep asking for another flea collar every two weeks like itching himself constantly isn't driving their cat to insanity.”

Looking between the sheriff, who was still smiling, and Scott, who had launched into a new story about a particularly ferocious parakeet, Lydia didn't think they realized what had just happened. Didn't think they grasped the significance of what Scott had said. Because it wasn't just that the story was the kind of thing Stiles would have found hilarious. It was that if Stiles had been alive to experience the perennially flea-bitten cat firsthand, he would have told the story exactly the way that Scott did. It was that Lydia kept noticing mannerisms that Scott had picked up from Stiles back in high school and still hadn't stopped using. It was that Stiles’s god-awful blue jeep was still taking up space in the sheriff’s garage, and the sheriff was eating salad because Stiles would have wanted him to, and it had been exactly ten years since Stiles had died and Lydia still saw him everywhere she dared to look. 

Lydia glanced down at her salad, hoping for a distraction, and caught a glimpse of red tomatoes instead. 

“I left my coat in the car,” Lydia said, unhooking her heels from the bar of her chair and standing up abruptly. “Be back in a minute.”

She walked through the front door, back straight and shoulders thrown back—because she was still Lydia Martin and she was still going to at least pretend that she was okay—before dropping into the driver’s seat, clenching her hands around the steering wheel, and trying not to scream. 

Judging by the gently sympathetic expression displayed on Scott's face when he came out to check on her a few minutes later, Lydia was pretty sure she hadn't succeeded. 

He slid into the passenger seat and waited quietly for a few minutes, hands resting on his knees, before turning to her and saying, “Do you want to go back inside and eat your salad, or would you rather leave now?”

_ I'll be inside in a minute,  _ Lydia planned on saying. “How do you do it?” came out of her mouth instead. 

“Do what?”

Lydia held onto the steering wheel tighter, knuckles white like they could take her mind off of her aching heart. “Talk like Stiles. Talk about Stiles. Remember Stiles without thinking your heart is going to rip in two.”

“Lydia.” Scott’s voice was so soft. “It's been ten years. At some point, you have to choose whether to accept his continued presence in your life or forget about him altogether. Staying stuck between the two is no way to live.” He hesitated, then added, “You learned to remember Allison without hurting. I know you can learn to remember Stiles too.”

Lydia shook her head. “I never claimed to be over Allison either.”

“Lydia—”

“I actually have a client to meet at four,” Lydia said, hating the way her voice seemed to hang in the air, stifling them both. If she listened hard enough, she thought she’d probably be able to hear the leftover reverberations of her screams trapped in her car seat’s fabric. “So we should probably leave now.”

“ _ Lydia _ —”

“We should probably leave now, Scott.”

Scott still looked like he wanted to argue. But it had been ten years today, and they had an agreement, her and Scott and the sheriff. Anniversaries were free days. 

Today, heartbreak was acceptable. Today, she was allowed to see tomatoes and recall red pants, blood, and the moment she was no longer able to distinguish between the two. 

“Okay,” Scott said finally. “I'll go get the sheriff.”

He closed the car door behind him, leaving Lydia alone with her grief. 

Even when he came back, she was alone with her grief. Because she relinquished her keys to Scott and the sheriff called shotgun and suddenly Lydia was the only one in the back, and the echoes of her screams were strongest in the empty seat beside her. 

* * *

Confronting grief head-on was supposed to help people heal. Lydia knew this. She'd read multiple textbooks on grief counseling her junior year of high school, when the only best friends she had left were falling apart around her and keeping herself together seemed like the only way for the pack to survive. 

Looking at Stiles’s gravestone didn't feel like confronting grief. It felt like drowning. 

Lydia did what she always did on anniversaries; she stood back and listened as the sheriff told Stiles’s gravestone about the cases he would have found interesting, as Scott rattled off every mildly entertaining event that had happened to him in the last year, as both of them switched to recounting their favorite memories of Stiles. She listened, and listened, and kept silent, and offered to drive back when they seemed to have talked themselves out, and hugged Scott and the sheriff goodbye before claiming that she really needed to meet her client, and pretended like she was being strong by not crying even though Scott was teary-eyed, and got back in her car, and promptly drove back to the cemetery and collapsed next to Stiles’s grave and cried for the next several hours. 

Afterwards—when her tears had trickled and dried into mascara tracks painted across her face instead of brackish rivers pulling her under—Lydia planned on continuing her yearly ritual and curling up at home with a glass of water and her aching heart. But when she trudged back to her car and pressed one booted foot to the gas pedal, the steering wheel seemed to take her in another direction altogether. 

Lydia pulled into the driveway of a red house with white trim and rosebushes without quite knowing how she got there. She waited for another five minutes, taking shallow breaths, scrubbing away the last black smudges of her tears, schooling her expression into something that resembled normalcy, before climbing out of her car and walking inside. 

As it turned out, all that schooling was unnecessary, because the ghost assaulted her as soon as she opened the door. 

“Where have you  _ been _ ?” he demanded. 

“Working,” Lydia said vaguely. She didn't feel like she owed the ghost an explanation, let alone a tragic backstory. 

“No,” the ghost said. “No, you haven't been  _ working _ , because if you  _ had _ then you would have brought your client at four like you said you were going to!”

“They cancelled.”

“Oh, they  _ cancelled _ .” The ghost was practically snarling at this point, although his vehemence was less effective without a scowl to accompany it. “Yeah, right. People can't just cancel showings last-minute.”

“Okay, fine,” Lydia snapped. She was too full of grief, of exhaustion, of residual tears to deal with a ghost’s temper tantrum. “You're right. I lied. I didn't have any clients today.”

“You  _ what _ ?” the ghost shrieked. In the kitchen, another picture frame rattled off its nail and smashed on the floor. This time, Lydia didn't think he'd done it on purpose. “You can't lie to me about something like that! I've been waiting for you for hours! Damn it, Lydia, I thought you'd been in an accident or something! I thought you'd  _ died _ .”

“Why do you even care?” Lydia cut back. “You're already dead.”

“Yeah, but  _ you're _ not! Just because I'm dead doesn't mean that I'd wish it on other people! You're a genius, and a banshee, and a fucking force of nature, and the world needs you in it whether you're aware of it or not. Fuck, Lyds, you can’t do this to me! I've been going out of my mind!”

There was something strange about the ghost’s argument, Lydia realized with a frown. Something familiar about his melodramatics. It almost felt like—like—

“‘And if you die, I will literally go out of my freaking mind,’” Lydia said out loud. 

_ Like she'd had this conversation before _ . 

“What?” the ghost asked, feigning ignorance. But a hitch in his inflection gave him away, and just like that, Lydia  _ knew.  _

“You chose  _ The Notebook, _ ” she said. 

“I—”

“No,” she said. “No, don't make excuses. You chose  _ The Notebook _ because you knew that I liked it, and you remembered that I always drank Pinot Noir, and you—” Her voice cracked against her will, but Lydia pushed forward. “You called me Lyds, just now. I  _ know _ who you are.”

“Oh, Lydia.” A pause. “I know you do.”

The ghost’s voice was becoming less distorted—like he was dragging himself out of water, and opening the door between dimensions that had kept his voice so muffled for all this time, and—and then Stiles Stilinski was standing in her client’s front hall. 

Lydia went very still. 

“ _ Stiles _ .”

He looked somewhat precarious without gravity anchoring him to the floor, but his feet still technically touched the ground. (Or appeared to.) His hair stuck out more haphazardly than she remembered, but that was easily attributed to the fact that the distinction between his body and the air was a little hazy. The small smile he offered her was even more lovestruck and blinding and all-consuming than she remembered, but maybe that was just another side effect of being dead. 

For once in her life, Lydia didn't really care about the explanations behind the phenomena. She just took a step forward, and then another and another, until she was trying to take Stiles’s hands and hers passed straight through. 

“Fuck,” Stiles said, “I was afraid this would happen,” and for a moment, Lydia wanted the inter-dimensional voice distortion to return, if only so she wouldn't have to hear how devastated Stiles sounded. She hated listening to devastated-Stiles. Devastated-Stiles said things like  _ this isn't going to work _ and  _ I couldn't figure it out  _ and  _ I guess the only good thing is it looks like I'm dying too _ . But devastated-Stiles was better than no Stiles at all. 

Lydia would know.

* * *

_ “I couldn’t figure it out.” _

_ The outside world was an incomprehensible cacophony of chaos and claws, but Lydia’s vision had narrowed to a single point of focus as soon as she’d seen the wolfsbane-laced bullet tear a hole between Stiles’s ribs. She dropped to her knees, turned him onto his uninjured side to keep pressure off his punctured lung, and pressed her palms against the wound, cursing the crescent moon for being an utterly useless light source, damning the darkness for preventing her from assessing the severity of his injury. _

_ “What do you mean, Stiles?” she asked, applying constant pressure to Stiles both physically and mentally. If he stayed focused, he wouldn’t lose consciousness. If he didn’t lose consciousness, he wouldn’t… _

_ “When the Order showed up.”  _

_ If the some of the Argents used to be extreme, the Order was apocalyptic. At least  _ “nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent”  _ had implied that the Hunters had some sort of criteria to determine which creatures they tracked down (even if that wasn't always the case). The Order thought that supernatural was a synonym for evil, and they were making it their mission to rid the world of the supernatural forever.  _

_ Which was why they were fighting less than a hundred yards away from the Nemeton in the middle of an unseasonably chilly summer night, and why Lydia couldn't believe she'd been naïve enough to grow complacent after two years of fighting-free college. There was always going to be another disaster to survive.  _

_ (If they survived.) _

_ Lydia forcibly pushed that thought out of her mind. “I don't know what you're talking about, Stiles,” she said instead, wishing for the hundredth time that banshees had healing powers, that she was like Scott and could take away other people's pain. “You  _ did _ figure it out, remember? We figured it out together _ — _ that the Order wasn't just here to kill supernatural creatures, but to rid the world of the supernatural altogether. You realized that they would try to destroy the Nemeton next _ — _ actually tear up the stump by its roots _ — _ and Deaton told us that would only make supernatural forces in Beacon Hills even more unstable. That's why we're here, remember? We're going to stop them. You figured that out.” _

_ But Stiles was shaking his head. “Not what I meant,” he rasped. “I meant… when the Order showed up and started killing supernatural creatures left and right and it kept looking like you or Scott or Malia or Kira were about to die, I couldn’t figure out how I would ever live without all of you. _

_ “I guess now I won’t have to.” _

_ Lydia’s hands slipped on the slick blood coating Stiles’s chest despite her best efforts. For one icy moment, she didn't think her hands could stop shaking long enough to continue applying pressure. But Stiles was still here, was still holding eye contact, and she wasn't about to give up on him when he had never once given up on her. She repositioned her hands and forced her voice to remain calm. “Don't say that. When they came for Kira in the desert, we found out and stopped them and saved her and brought her back here. When they attacked Malia, Scott helped her fight them off easily. This is no different. You can make it through this too.” _

_ “You're… the genius, Lyds.” His breath was coming out in irregular gasps now. It was easy for Lydia to tell, since her heart beat in tandem with every shudder of air. “You can tell that my lung is punctured. That's not… fixable.” _

_ “It is,” Lydia insisted, just as Stiles started coughing up blood. “People survive punctured lungs all the time.” _

_ “Yeah,” Stiles said between coughs, “if not… in woods… during battle.” _

_ He was right. Lydia knew the medical care required to save someone whose lung had been punctured, and she also knew that she didn't have the skills or materials needed to perform the procedure that could save his life. She couldn't exactly ask the Order to put the fight on hold so Scott could call his mom.  _

_ He was right, and Lydia had never hated it more.  _

_ “S’okay,” Stiles croaked, and then his hand found its way to hers, thumb stuttering over her knuckles in aborted circles. “I got… love you… for years.” _

_ “Yes, you did,” Lydia said, “of course you did, because I love you too.” _

_ Suddenly, the clearing lit up with a pulsing, crackling white light _ — _ from Kira’s lightning, maybe _ — _ illuminating the blood coating Stiles’s chest, coating Lydia’s fingers, dyeing his shirt a crimson shade that made it completely indistinguishable from his red pants. When the light faded, the red remained. Lydia’s vision was saturated with it.  _

_ A few moments later, Scott slid onto the grass at Lydia’s side, eyes absorbing the state of his best friend in a way that cracked Lydia’s heart wide open. “Oh, God, Stiles, I'm so sorry,” he whispered, grabbing onto Stiles’s other hand. “I'm sorry I wasn't there to take that bullet instead.” _

_ “Nah,” Stiles said, trying for a reassuring tone and only halfway succeeding. “Let me be… the hero this time.” His next breath shook his entire body. Lydia shook right alongside him. “S’okay. ‘Ll always be… your brother.” _

_ They might have said other words. They might have held an entire conversation, but Lydia lost track of it after that, focusing all her energy on holding Stiles’s hand, futilely keeping pressure on his chest, and watching his face jump with feeling and conviction and  _ life  _ while it still could. That's why she was the first to notice when Stiles took one last look at two of the most important people in his life, smiled a little bit, and let his eyelids slide shut.  _

_ It was ironic, really. The Order dipped their bullets in wolfsbane because they knew it was one of the only ways to take down a werewolf.  _

_ But as it turned out, the bullet itself could kill humans just as easily.  _

* * *

Lydia didn't know how long she stared at Stiles without speaking. He didn't seem to mind, since he was staring right back. What came out of her mouth eventually was, “I'm sorry I lied to you. About the client.”

“It's okay,” Stiles replied, and Lydia was struck again by how  _ solid _ his voice sounded now. It made her inability to touch him even more aggravating. “I get it. You had no way to be sure the ghost would clean up if you didn't tell him a client was coming over later, right?” He flashed her a smile. 

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, but I'm… I’m used to lying about having clients on anniversaries. I always do. I guess it didn't even occur to me that I didn't have to lie to you.”

“Anniversaries?”

She was staring again. “Of your death, Stiles. It's been ten years today.”

“Oh.” Stiles blinked rapidly a few times. “Oh.”

“You didn't know?”

“I told you this morning, time is hard now,” Stiles said. “No point in measuring increments of forever, you know? I don't really think about it.”

_ Increments of forever. _ Lydia felt a little like throwing up. Instead, she crossed her arms and said, “I’m not the only one who needs to apologize for lying, though. What the  _ hell _ , Stiles? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

It had been ten years, but Lydia could classify Stiles’s shifting gaze as guilt as easily as if she’d never gone a day without cataloguing his expressions. “I had my reasons,” he hedged. “I was going to tell you eventually.” He grinned again. “But you figured it out before I got a chance.”

Lydia considered staying annoyed, but Stiles Stilinski was standing right in front of her. It was hard to feel anything but shock and confusion. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is  _ how _ you got here. This isn’t the place… you didn’t die here.”

“You’re right, I didn’t die here,” Stiles agreed. “But… I don’t know if it was because of all the shit the Order was doing that night, or Kira’s lightning, or just the area around the Nemeton being a fucking weird place, but when I died, my spirit somehow got, like, tethered to one of the nearby trees. A few years later, the couple who built this house used that tree to make some of the floorboards. I’ve been here ever since.”

Lydia shook her head. "All this time.  _ All this time _ , you've been tethered to floorboards forty-five minutes away from where I live?"

"Funny how fate works, isn't it?"

_ There's no such thing as fate _ , she wanted to say. It was the mantra— _ Allison's _ mantra—that she'd clung to for almost half of her life, using it to block out the words of people who'd been trying to comfort her.  _ Everything happens for a reason _ , they'd said.  _ I know this feels like a senseless tragedy, but God's plan for us works in inexplicable ways. _ But that was stupid, that was cruel,  _ that _ was senseless. That was like saying that Stiles and Allison were better off dead, that their deaths held more meaning than their lives ever could, and _ that _ was something Lydia would never accept. Their futures should have been bright and long and fulfilling.  _ Fate _ didn't dictate their deaths—only chance and failure and supernatural demons could cause those. Fate was not a part of Lydia's worldview.

But she had refused to visit the site of Stiles's death for ten long years, so the site of Stiles's death had come to her.

That sounded dangerously close to fate.

“I can’t believe it,” she breathed. “I can’t believe you’re really… God, I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Stiles murmured. “I know I can’t touch you, but—but fuck it, come here anyway.”

Lydia obeyed, pulling up just short of crashing through Stiles completely. He reached out and brushed his hands over her shoulders, across her cheekbones, through her hair, and if Lydia concentrated, she could almost pretend that the slight wind she felt was as comforting as a real touch.

She didn’t know how long they stood there—Lydia shivering, Stiles existing, both of them afraid to move—before Stiles leaned back and said, “So. You hungry?”

Lydia raised her eyebrows. “Did you use my credit card again?”

“ _ No _ ,” Stiles insisted. “I just… have a lot of food left over from last time.”

Narrowing her eyes with suspicion, Lydia stalked over to the refrigerator, threw it open, and found it fully stocked. “ _ Stiles _ ,” she said. “Were you planning on cooking for me for  _ every meal _ ?”

“Maybe.” When she shot him a judgmental look, Stiles scoffed and said, “Come on, Lydia, you know you’re a terrible cook. But… if you want to feel like your money isn’t going to waste, you could join me in the kitchen and I could help you learn.”

He looked so hopeful that Lydia couldn’t say no. Not that she wanted to, anyway. Stiles was right there, sarcastic and loving and  _ real _ . She didn’t plan on letting him out of her sight for a moment. “Fine,” she said. “We can even watch another movie afterwards, if you want. As long as you don’t try to put  _ The Notebook _ in again.”

“I don’t get it,” Stiles said. “When I was alive, that was one of your favorites. Why don’t you want to watch it anymore?”

“Because,” she said, “every time I try, all I can think about is the time I made you watch it with me, and you cried, and—people in love are supposed to get to grow old together, Stiles.”

“Yeah, I know.” Stiles looked down, and Lydia realized that he was trying to run his thumb over her knuckles in careful circles, and for a moment, it was like the past ten years had never happened. “We  _ should  _ watch it, though. Give you a better memory to go with it.” He shrugged. “I can’t cry now, anyway.”

For the first time, that didn’t sound like the worst thing Lydia could imagine. “All right,” she found herself saying. “Teach me how to make chicken noodle soup, and then we’ll watch  _ The Notebook _ .”

“How did you know I was going to make chicken noodle soup?”

“I’ve watched you make it enough times,” she said, “even if I never did it myself. All the ingredients for it are in the fridge.”

“Fucking genius,” Stiles said again, beaming. “Let’s make soup and watch a stupidly emotional chick flick together.”

So they did.

* * *

“Why are you bringing me to your haunted house?” Scott asked as Lydia tugged him up the steps. “Is the ghost actually causing serious problems now?”

“No, he’s—see for yourself.”

Lydia pushed Scott in front of her as soon as she opened the door. She felt him freeze in shock the same moment she did—because even though she’d just seen Stiles two hours ago, it still felt too good to be true.

Stiles stuck his hands in the pockets of his red pants and rocked forward a little, smiling sheepishly. “Hey, Scotty.”

“ _ Stiles _ —what—how—”

“Weird Nemeton magic,” he said. “I’m a ghost now.”

“I…” Scott looked at Lydia. She shrugged. He looked back at Stiles. “Okay. Wow, it’s… hi, Stiles.”

“Hi,” Stiles grinned. “So, you survive vet school yet?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “I’ve been a certified vet for over two years now, but shouldn’t you already know that?”

“Uh, no. Lydia just realized who I was last night, she hasn’t really caught me up on everyone’s life stories.”

“Yeah, but… I’ve already told you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every year,” Scott said slowly, “your dad and Lydia and I visit you. We just went yesterday, and sometimes I go on my own, too. I tell you basically everything.”

Lydia frowned at that, not understanding how Scott could think of Stiles so often without losing his mind, but Stiles just furrowed his eyebrows. “Visit? What, like, visit my grave?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “You’re a ghost; couldn’t you hear me?”

“Uh, no,” Stiles said. “Dude, I can't hear you when you talk to my gravestone.”

“Why not?”

Stiles laughed. “It’s not like I hang around my dead body. How creepy would that be?” 

“Fair enough.” Scott laughed too, and Lydia smiled along with them. “That's too bad, though. You missed a lot of pretty funny stories.”

“That's okay,” Stiles said. “You can just tell me all of them again.”

“Ten years’ worth of stories? No way. I probably couldn’t remember half of them, let alone tell them right. Oh, but there is this one cat who keeps getting fleas—”

Just then, the sheriff burst through the still-unlocked door. “Lydia, sorry I’m late. I was dealing with some vandalism at the school, and I—what the hell’s going on? You two are making some strange faces at me right now.” 

“That’s probably my fault,” Stiles said from behind them. Wordlessly, Lydia and Scott separated to give the sheriff a better view. “Hi, Dad. I’d give you a hug, but it turns out I can only touch inanimate objects.”

“ _ Stiles _ ?” Despite the warning, the sheriff stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his son, not seeming to care that they went straight through. “What are you doing here?”

“Ghost,” Stiles, Lydia, and Scott said at the same time.

To Lydia’s surprise, the sheriff didn’t seem particularly surprised. “Okay, fine, but why are you  _ still _ here? It’s been ten years. Do you have some sort of unfinished business? How can we help?”

Stiles phased through the sheriff’s arms and fidgeted with the end of his flannel. “It’s kinda complicated,” he said, inexplicably looking towards Lydia, “but it’s also not that big a deal. Can we just make grilled cheese while Scott tells me about fleabitten cats?”

The sheriff hesitated but eventually gave in with a small smile. “Sure, why not? It’s good to see you again, son.”

“You too, Dad.”

It felt so  _ right _ , Lydia realized. Sitting next to Scott at the kitchen counter until Stiles roped her into helping again. Laughing as all of Scott’s werewolf strength wasn’t enough to open a twist-top beer bottle, but the sheriff popped it open easily. Sitting on the floor between her best friend and the father-in-law she might have had in another timeline, eating the sandwich that Stiles had grilled to perfection. 

It was the life she’d lived for two and a half summers between long college years of Skype calls and text messages. It was the life she’d expected to have for another six or seven decades, and finally, finally,  _ finally _ , she was living it again. Over the next week or so, Lydia and Scott and the sheriff met inside the red house with white trim and rosebushes every day after each of them finished work. Stiles cooked. Lydia helped. They ate the best meals Lydia had tried in a decade—because each one tasted like family and hope and coming home.

Which was why Lydia was so furious when Stiles stopped scaring her clients away.

* * *

“It is an absolutely lovely house,” Ben O’Malley announced, his Irish accent lilting his vowels pleasantly. “Really, I’m surprised you haven’t sold it already.”

“I am too,” Lydia said, trying not to let her internal panic show on her face.  _ What was Stiles waiting for? _ “I suppose it’s just been waiting for the right buyer.”

“Maybe so,” his wife, Shea, said with a quiet laugh. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll be that buyer.”

“I hope so!” their daughter Piper chirped, skipping past them to the front door. “My new bedroom would be so cool! There’ll be plenty of room for my sister and I to play with my dollhouse!”

“Sister?” Lydia asked, raising her eyebrows.

Shea blushed and touched her stomach absently. “It’s only been about two months. I haven’t even started showing yet. Piper’s convinced that she’s going to have a little sister, so I don’t know how she’ll react if we find out it’s a boy.”

“It’ll be fine,” Ben insisted. “The baby can play Barbies and dress up for tea either way. They can also play with Legos either way, if they prefer those.”

“Hopefully not as a baby, though,” Shea pointed out. “Legos are serious choking hazards.”

“We’ll start the tyke out with other toys,” Ben conceded. “But we’re rambling again. Thank you for the wonderful tour, Lydia. We have a few other properties to look at before we make a decision, but we’ll be in touch.”

“Looking forward to it,” Lydia said, forcing a smile. “And congratulations on the new baby. I’m sure they’ll be a delight, no matter what.”

“Oh, no, they’ll be a terror!” Shea said, laughing again. “For the first few years, anyway. Once we get past the Terrible Twos, we’ll see about them being a delight.”

“Not me, though. Right, Mum?” Lydia heard Piper ask as the family walked towards their car. “I was always a delight, wasn’t I?”

Lydia missed the tail-end of the conversation, since she was too busy closing the door, whirling around, and waiting for Stiles to reappear. As soon as he did, she put her hands on her hips and said, “What the hell was that?”

“What?” Stiles asked indignantly. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Exactly! Why didn’t you scare them off with another stupid ghost stunt?”

Stiles frowned. “Shea was pregnant. I was being considerate.”

“Fuck being considerate!” Lydia said, knowing her voice was too loud and not caring in the least. “Now they’re actually thinking about making an offer!”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Stiles shot back, crossing his arms and taking advantage of their substantial height difference to glare down at Lydia. “How many times have you asked me not to bother your clients? Why are you so mad now that I’m actually doing it?”

“Because that was before!” Lydia shouted in exasperation.

“Before what?”

“Before I knew it was  _ you _ , Stiles! Isn’t it obvious? If I sell the house, I—we won’t be able to see you anymore!”

“That’s kind of the  _ point _ , Lydia!”

“But I—wait,  _ what _ ?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “The plan was always to keep scaring clients away until I found someone who belonged here, and the O’Malleys are a fucking nice family, Lyds. They’d make this into a really fucking nice home.”

“Okay, they’re nice,” Lydia said. “So what? Are you actually telling me that you’d rather live quietly with a bunch of strangers than stay with me? Or would you pop up on move-in day, wave at them, and ask if they want you to make them dinner too?”

“Well, ideally, I wouldn’t still be here at all!”

The words were a drumbeat that Lydia felt to her core. “You… you don’t want to stay?”

“It’s not about what I want, Lyds,” Stiles said, so agitated that he actually started flickering in and out of focus. It was a painful reminder of his ghostliness that Lydia  _ really didn’t need right now _ . “It’s… come on, Lydia, you’ve worked everything else out by now. Haven’t you realized what my unfinished business here is?”

Lydia’s stomach sank down to her polished stilettos. She still whispered, “No.”

“You sure about that?” Stiles asked. His eyes softened, and he looked at her with that stupidly-affectionate-but-still-concerned expression she remembered from high school. “It’s  _ you _ , Lyds. It’s always been you.”

Lydia swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” Stiles said. “My unfinished business was making sure you and Scott and my dad and everyone who knew me moved on, and—and it’s been ten  _ years _ , Lyds. Scott’s running the animal clinic. My dad’s voluntarily eating vegetables now. You’re the only one who’s still acting like you can spend the rest of your life in this red house.”

"I have moved on," Lydia insisted. But her voice cracked, betraying her.

"You haven't," Stiles replied. "You haven't, or you wouldn't still be living in Beacon Hills."

“No,” Lydia said. “No, you’re wrong. I came back to help Scott deal with the supernatural.”

“Yeah, I know that’s the excuse you used,” Stiles said, “but Lydia, that was  _ years _ ago. The threat  _ passed _ .”

“You don’t—”

“Lydia, Scott’s told me about it, okay?” Stiles interrupted. “You have a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and you’re working as a  _ realtor _ , just so you won’t have to move out of Beacon Hills. What happened to winning a Fields Medal?”

“I’m a chemical engineer now, Stiles. I’d win the Nobel Prize in chemistry.”

“ _ Lydia _ .”

“ _ I didn’t want to leave, okay?! _ ” The words tore out of Lydia before she could stop them, halfway between a sob and a banshee scream. “Do I have to say it out loud? Fine.  _ I didn’t want to leave _ . I  _ tried _ to get over you, okay? I had plenty of sex senior year—dated about fifty different people in grad school—but then I finished my degree at MIT and I was  _ tired _ . Tired of pretending not to miss you, tired of waking up from nightmares without you on the other side of the bed, tired of knowing that Scott McCall, the closest friend I had left and probably the kindest and more understanding person in the entire world, was actually still alive but I missed him almost as much as I missed you because he was on the other side of the fucking country. 

“So yes, I came back to Beacon Hills. Yes, I became a realtor because there’s a significant shortage of chemical labs in this town, but it shouldn’t surprise you to know that plenty of people are always moving out. I wanted Scott back in my life, and yes, maybe I wanted you back in my life too. Maybe I didn’t mind that my throat closed up when I drove past your favorite diner or when I took a walk in the woods and thought about Allison. Maybe it felt better to live with an open wound than pretend that my heart didn’t shatter the night that yours stopped. And  _ maybe _ I don’t want to sell this house the moment you show up in my life again!”

Lydia dropped the words at Stiles’s feet, knowing it wasn’t fair to him and remaining unable to stop herself. She waited for him to respond.

When he did, it was to reach up and run his thumbs along her cheeks. It felt like the faintest breeze was brushing her tear tracks away. “There’s just… you’re meant to do more than this, Lyds. You’re meant to change the world. And maybe I’d rather help you move on than selfishly ask the girl I’ve loved for an entire lifetime to stay tethered to a town that doesn’t deserve her.” He moved away from her cheekbones, running his hands across her shoulders and down her arms instead. “It’s why I got you to finally learn how to cook, and why I asked you to watch  _ The Notebook _ again, and why I didn’t interfere with the O’Malleys today. It’s why I think you should sell this house and then quit your job.”

“But what if—”

Lydia’s phone started ringing.

Stiles pulled it out of her purse and held it out to her. “It might be important,” he said softly. “You should answer it.”

She answered it. “Hello, this is Lydia Martin speaking.”

“Hi,” the woman on the other end replied. “It’s Yvenne.”

“Oh, hello, Yvenne,” Lydia said, subconsciously shifting into a more businesslike pose. “How are you?”

“I’m going to be honest, Lydia,” Yvenne said. “My husband and I don’t know if we can afford to keep paying two mortgages much longer. You said our house would be fairly easy to sell, but it’s been six weeks without a single offer. If we don’t receive an offer in the next three weeks, I’m afraid we may have to start considering other options. Even if that means finding another realtor.”

“Well.” Lydia’s voice sounded faint to her own ears. “You know. You can’t always predict how the housing market will behave. But a wonderful family just came by to look at the house today, and they were extremely interested. I’m sure you don’t need to worry.”

“Be that as it may, my statement stands,” Yvenne answered. “I’ll call you next week to discuss any progress you’ve made.”

Yvenne hung up.

Lydia stayed frozen in place, clutching her phone, until Stiles pulled it out of her grip and returned it to her purse. “Lydia? What happened?”

“That was Yvenne.”

“Oh.”

“She doesn’t want to keep paying two mortgages.”

“Oh.”

“I have three weeks.”

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Then Stiles cupped Lydia’s face, leaned down, and kissed her.

It felt like kissing a thunderstorm.

With a half-aborted sob, Lydia pulled away and sank to the floor, physically unable to keep herself upright any longer. If Stiles had been alive, he would have wrapped his arms around her until she could stand on her own. But Stiles wasn’t alive, so all he could do was sit on the ground beside her, tapping his fingers on his knees in a pattern Lydia recognized as her own heartbeat.

There was a condition Lydia had first read about years ago, when she was young and self-assured and convinced that she was above the limitations of human emotion.  _ Takotsubo cardiomyopathy _ . Broken-heart syndrome. A physical response to emotional trauma that mimicked the symptoms of a heart attack. At age 13, it had been an interesting phenomenon that she'd been certain she would never experience herself. It manifested almost exclusively among women between the ages of 58 and 75, so Lydia was fairly certain that she wasn't experiencing it now either.

But whether she sold the red house with white trim and rosebushes or not, she had three weeks to let go of Stiles Stilinski.

The ache in her chest certainly felt like a heart attack.

**Author's Note:**

> So... that happened.
> 
> In case you didn't notice, this is the first part of a two-part series entitled "bury your demons (or let them play)". There was just... too much to do in this universe for me to fit it into a single fic, honestly. The second part will come out at an unspecified point in the future. (Hopefully sooner rather than later, but we'll see!) In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment telling me what you thought!
> 
> And find me on tumblr: [@stilestilikeslydia](http://stilestilikeslydia.tumblr.com)
> 
> (Also, if anyone was curious, I definitely only named those villains "The Order" because _argent_ is French for silver and _or_ is French for gold. Okay, that's all.)
> 
> \- Anya


End file.
